The plan is to reread all of Stephen King’s works in the order that they were published. Richard Chizmar of Cemetery Dance had the vision. I’m doing it because I am a writer and I want to improve my fiction. And I love Stephen King’s stories. I think there is something to be learned through this process.

You can also go back to the beginning and read Before Carrie or any of my other posts up through this one and beyond by checking out this link to the Master List of all my #StephenKingRevisited posts.

A Face in the Crowd was a good story but probably would have served just as well as one small piece in short story collection. Most of the book was ads and a couple excerpts from other work. I’m not sure why he needed a coauthor to complete this one other than pulling up specific players and sequences from games that might have required a little research.

I’m not unhappy I read it. I do believe I can tell why it hasn’t been advertised more and is available only in ebook.

A man loses his wife in the waning years of his life. He tries to get by in a Florida highrise on his own. The marriage was 46 years of the good and bad with no one else but him who remembers any of it now. He watches baseball to fill the silence.

He’s lived a life that hasn’t been particularly bad morally or in terms of his personal enjoyment, but he has left behind people who might have a bone to pick with him from beyond the grave. A poor choice in business partner leads to success but requires betrayal later in order to survive. He has an affair of his own. He did wrong by a kid in his youth. His son isn’t close to him. His emergency contact is an old friend who happens to live in the same state and that makes him sad.

He sees people in the crowd during the games who shouldn’t be there. He communicates with a few of them. Then, he must go face these faces in the crowd at the Devil Rays’ games.

I liked the story. Is it worth the purchase to you? I don’t know.

My next post in this series will be Before The Wind Through the Keyhole which will be linked on the Master List of all my Stephen King Revisited posts.

Jay Wilburn

Jay Wilburn has a Masters Degree in Education that goes mostly unused since he quit teaching to write about zombies. Jay writes horror because he tends to find the light by facing down the darkness. His is doing well following a life saving kidney transplant. Jay is the author of Maidens of Zombie Kingdom a young adult fantasy trilogy, Lake Scatter Wood Tales adventure books for elementary and middle school readers, Vampire Christ a trilogy of political and religious satire, and The Dead Song Legend. He cowrote The Enemy Held Near, Yard Full of Bones, and The Hidden Truth with Armand Rosamilia. You can also find Jay's work in Best Horror of the Year volume 5. He is a staff writer with Dark Moon Digest, LitReactor, and the Still Water Bay series with Crystal Lake Publishing.

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